A Retailer Discovers China's New 'It' Girl: Grandpa

A 72-year-old Chinese man has become one of the country's hottest fashion models--of women's clothing. His cross-dressing antics have taken the nation by storm. WSJ's Josh Chin reports from Beijing.

By

Laurie Burkitt And

Josh Chin

January 8, 2013

BEIJING—While other 72-year-old Chinese men spend their days practicing tai chi and playing mah-jongg, Liu Qianping is enjoying a twilight career modeling clothes. Women's clothes.

At a fall fashion shoot, the 5-foot-8 former rice farmer from central Hunan vamped for the camera in lacy green tights and white fur-lined pink dresses. Online and on TV, he has become a meme, with his image circulated by millions on Chinese social media sites and talk shows.

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Liu Qianping

He owes his star turn to his granddaughter, Lu Ting, a clothier who struggled for months to find a model who could boost her online store without breaking the bank. "He's just so slender," Ms. Lu says of her 110-pound grandfather. She notes that he looks great in crimson dresses and credits him for more than quadrupling her sales in recent weeks.

Mr. Liu's ascent in the modeling realm speaks volumes about shifting cultural mores in a fast-aging society. The waif of a man, who goes about in a three-piece suit and a bow-tie when he isn't clad in pink satin, is among a cadre of Chinese seniors who are all too familiar with cultural upheaval. Their lives have been marked by unimaginable change—from surviving famine to the advent of fast food. Along the way, many have adopted a devil-may-care approach that flies in the face of stereotypes about conservative Asian elders.

Already, the country's elderly exhibitionists have become something of an entertainment phenomenon, even spawning a new genre on Chinese video sites called laolaiqiao. That translates, loosely from the Mandarin, as "old people doing young things that even young people wouldn't do."

In May 2011, Bai Shuying, then 65 years old, shot to the top of the laolaiqiao charts when she turned out an uncanny impersonation of Michael Jackson, pelvic thrusts and all, on the popular reality show "China's Got Talent."

Photos: Grandpa, China's 'It' Girl

Liu Qianping has become a sensation in China after photos circulated online of him modeling his granddaughter's fashion line. REUTERS

"I saw him on TV and I knew our fates were connected," says Ms. Bai of Mr. Jackson.

Four months later, a choir of elderly amateurs went viral with an adorably choreographed rendition of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" as part of a national mid-Autumn festival broadcast.

Henan Satellite Television hosts a weekly talent show featuring vibrant seniors. One of them is 74-year-old Zheng Xueming, who can juggle a tennis ball on his knees for hours. The show's producer says it was tough at first to find gifted geriatric types. But after several episodes aired, applications began pouring in. More than 700 seniors, he says, have tossed their names in the hat to appear on "Golden Dream Stage."

Mr. Liu was a natural fit for the job, says his granddaughter. After 40 years of wading through rice fields, Mr. Liu is more than happy to help his family bring in a little extra cash—even if it means slipping into a pearl-decorated jumper or sporting a blonde wig. And he isn't in the least worried what people might say.

"This one time she got a big shipment of clothes. I took a few pieces out, thought they were nice looking and threw them on," he says. "I looked good," he adds.

After rocketing to fame on the Internet in November, Mr. Liu has also started doing the television rounds, receiving a roaring ovation from the studio audience during a recent taping of Henan Satellite TVs "Know Your Roots" in Beijing when he strutted out on stage doing his own version of Korean rapper Psy's "Gangnam Style" dance.

Mr. Liu, who is also a fan of online videogames, relishes his experimentations. "In the past, we didn't have these things, the country wasn't developed," he says, describing his years as a farmer in the 1950s and '60s as full of bitterness and hunger. "There's no comparison with the way things are now. Life now is so rich."

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Liu Qianping models outfits from the store owned by his granddaughter.
Yecco

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China's Internet users have mostly embraced Mr. Liu.
Yecco

So what is behind this proliferation of outgoing elderly people? According to Peng Xizhe, a scholar at Fudan University in Shanghai who studies issues around aging, it is an outgrowth of the cultural diversification unleashed in China after the country first broke the seal on its once walled-off society in the late 1970s.

Chinese people in their 60s and 70s are like baby boomers in the U.S., says Mr. Peng, drawing parallels between the post-Mao enrichment of Chinese society and the American postwar economic boom. "Like with the baby boomers, the cultural ideas of older people in China now are very different from their parents," he says.

China's Internet users have mostly embraced Mr. Liu, with a few comparing him to the outré German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld. His cross-dressing has nevertheless stirred debate. In a country that reveres its elders, some talk-show commentators view Mr. Liu's gig as an assault on tradition. Other online critics have accused Ms. Lu of exploiting her grandfather for financial gain.

He does have his limits. He refuses to have his neck exposed in pictures and insists that he alone does all the styling. "I have to pick out the combinations," he says insistently. "I have the best sense of what blouse should be paired with what skirt."

Few of Mr. Liu's fellow Mao-era baby boomers appear stunned by his alacrity. In fact, most seem more taken by his physique.

"It has to be Photoshopped, right? His legs are so thin," marveled Ms. Yang, a 62-year-old Beijing resident who preferred to be identified only by her surname.

Yang Kunfu, an 80-year-old former soldier from China's southwestern Sichuan province noted that Mr. Liu photographed better in some outfits than others. "Oh, he looks much fatter in that dress," Mr. Yang said, pointing to a thigh-grazing orange cape.

To be sure, cross-dressing isn't entirely bizarre in Chinese culture. Until the 1940s, female roles in Beijing opera were played by men.

All the attention seems to be taking a toll on Mr. Liu, who now limits media photo shoots to one or two outfits, down from six or seven when newspapers and TV stations first came calling. Still, he says he is happy his name is getting out there.

Ms. Lu said that she also believes her grandfather has the talent—at least more so than her father. When asked if her dad might become China's next model sensation, Ms. Lu said: "Oh, he could never model; he has a beer belly."

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